On Nov. 5, University of Iowa alum Alice Leora Briggs will be coming to the Visual Arts Building to speak about her work as a draftsman, printmaker, and installation artist.

The artist will stay for one week to work with UI  students. This will be the first time she has returned to the UI since 1982, a year after her graduation.

Briggs has had her work featured in over 40 solo exhibits across the United States and has been featured in numerous public collections. Heather Parrish, an assistant professor in printmaking at the UI, invited her to come back to the university.

“I’m originally from Texas, like Alice,” Parrish said. “I ended up working at the same place as her, and I loved her work. … I didn’t even know she went to the University of Iowa for a long time.”

Briggs said she is excited to return after so many years.

“There used to be this amazing letterpress in the journalism building I used all the time,” she said. “I’m excited to come and see the different changes to the programs after all these years.”

Briggs said she was no stranger to lecture programs and visiting artist the university brought in when she was there.

“When I was a graduate student, we would have these great artists from New York and all over come and visit,” Briggs said. “The ones that impacted me the most were these four alumni that came… I hope some students can have the same experience with me.”

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At her lecture on Tuesday, she will be speaking about her book, Dreamland: The Way Out of Juarez and her upcoming book with the working title translated from the Spanish language to her other book, Alphabet of Juarez.

“The title of my upcoming book is based on the The ABC’s of the Plague,” she said. “Juarez is said to be the most violent city in the world, and I believe that the violence is acting like a plague.”

For this book, Briggs said she has around 100 drawings already.

“The book will act like a glossary of how certain words have changed because of the violence,” she said. “For example, the word for a person in a blanket has now been appropriated to refer to a mean a person dead in the street wrapped in a blanket.”

Besides her lecture, Briggs will be workshopping a wood block with around ten students, speaking to three printmaking classes, and working with students individually.

Through her lecture and her work with students, she said she hopes they understand how easily what they initially envision their work can change during the process and, as much as they have control over their work, their work and their environment has control over them.